Shermantine has been corresponding with The Record for six years in an exchange of letters that increased in frequency and detail beginning late last year. In a letter dated Dec. 5, he began to reveal the burial places.

He has revealed the information because Sacramento bounty hunter Leonard Padilla agreed to pay Shermantine $33,000. Padilla said he intends to make small payments to Shermantine.

Following Shermantine's tips, officials found the two murder victims in Calaveras County and 1,000 bones and skull fragments deep in an abandoned ranch well near Linden in eastern San Joaquin County.

Those remains have yet to be identified. A third set of yet-unidentified human remains have been found in Calaveras.

Shermantine blames the murders on his boyhood friend, Loren Herzog, who hanged himself at age 46 last month after learning Shermantine was giving up details about past crimes.

On Saturday, Shermantine met with The Record in a one-on-one interview at San Quentin State Prison's visiting hall for condemned men.

In such visits, the inmate and his invited guest are locked together in a steel mesh cage. The inmate is unshackled in what is called a “contact visit.”

The inmate and guest sit on plastic chairs and visit in close quarters. The visiting hall was busy with prison guards escorting inmates to the cages where family and friends greeted them with a handshake or brief embrace.

The Record's interview with Shermantine lasted nearly two hours. He talked on a wide range of topics, from the ongoing discoveries of human remains and the notoriety it has brought him in prison to his past love of hunting and fishing.

Regret was another topic of conversation. He admits letting drugs and alcohol wreck his marriage and life. He regretted keeping secret the burial places near his parent's castlelike home off Leonard Road outside San Andreas.

“I kept it from them for so long,” he said. “If I hadn't been on drugs, I wouldn't have been involved in any of it.”

Shermantine said he understands why relatives of the murder victims hate him. But in a strange moral twist, he also said they should forgive themselves.

“I want for them to forgive themselves for hating me,” said Shermantine, who converted to Catholicism in prison. “The Bible says you've got to be able to forgive.”

In the interview, Shermantine said there are a number of places investigators should continue to search, naming off a vague list of old wells and mine shafts throughout San Joaquin and Calaveras counties. He said he would send more details in future letters.

He also gave locations of some murder victims left where they were killed but long unsolved. Those places were in Modesto, Stockton, Ripon and the tiny community of Milton.

Shermantine blamed Herzog for killing Wheeler in 1985 and then asking him to bury her. In 1998, he said he did the same when he said Herzog murdered Vanderheiden. But it began with Wheeler, he said.

“I'm 18 years old,” he said of burying Wheeler out of fear. “What am I supposed to do?”

Prosecutors at trial said Wheeler had told friends that she was going to skip classes for the day at Franklin High School in Stockton and take a trip to the hills with Shermantine. Her blood was found at a hunting cabin on the Shermantine property near San Andreas. The cabin is long gone, but her remains were found there Feb. 10.

Shemantine said he never partied at “The Trees,” a popular party spot outside of Linden where San Joaquin County Sheriff's detectives found bone and skull fragments, along with clothes, a purse, an engraved ring and women's shoes.

Officials have yet to release the DNA test results that may determine who those remains belonged to.

Shermantine listed several names of people who he said partied there with Herzog. They can corroborate that he never went there with Herzog, Shermantine said Saturday.

Deputies last week returned to the area where they recovered Vanderheiden's skull and bones in Calaveras County. They reported finding more remains, but it is unclear if those are also Vanderheiden or another victim.

Shermantine said he did not know how many people died in the killing spree spanning much of the 1980s and '90s. He said he heard Herzog's videotaped confession saying there were 24 total victims.

He believes the 1,000 bones picked from the Linden well are those of two victims.

Barbara Jackson, Shermantine's older sister, has said that her brother and Herzog acted like brothers growing up. They hunted, fished and motorbiked all over the hills surrounding their childhood homes in Linden, Jackson has said.

The notoriety of being on TV so much lately has caused a mix of reactions among other San Quentin inmates, Shermantine said. Some inmates holler at him or choose now to keep their distance.